South Dakota-Wednesday

Wednesday, August 25

This was the Big, Exciting Day. The raison d'etre. Bison Day.

We woke up early and dressed for the day, got in the truck, and rode out 45 minutes to meet Lane at the ranch. We shifted from Allie's truck to Lane's and rode out about five minutes across the rode to the bison herd. It... was...awesome. The bison know that there's food on the truck so they ran along side, grunting the whole time. We got to feed them "cakes" (tastes like wheat, see left) from our hands. Lane didn't recommend patting the bison but I did it anyway. Their head hair is coarse and sproingy. Very fun. By the way, the animals are huge. It's one thing to know that they're huge. It's another to sit in your car and watch them walk down the road at a level higher than your car. It's a whole other world to be in the bed of a truck petting the darn things. They're huge.

We then went over to the elk compound and got to see the herd of four bucks and 8(?) ladies. They weren't as comfortable coming to eat cakes and one bull in particular did NOT like Lane. He tried to get through the fence to poke holes in Lane's body.

Then came shooting. The family has a shooting range made up of a bunch of old jars and bottles that you can line up on top of a no-longer-in-use washer and drier and then you shoot. I had never shot a gun before. At least, not that I can remember. That day, I got to shoot a .22 rifle, a.17 rifle with a scope, a.30-30 (lots of kick), 9mm sig sauer, and a .357 which is almost just like a Dirty Harry gun. Way fun.

Before we went in for dinner (read here, a very large lunch), we went out to

the south fields to shoot some prairie dogs. It took awhile for us to find them but finally both Allie and I shot some suckers. I think I missed on the first one (and there was some debate on whether it was a prairie dog or a rock) but got the second one I aimed at. I felt horribly guilty and swore never to kill again (that last about two weeks until I went out on the fishing boat) but I had to put up a good front because Lane had taken all this time out of his day to take these three ladies out and I didn't want to cry, especially since he had asked, like, three times if we really wanted to do this.

Dinner helped. Food is a balm to any soul. It's not supposed to be, but c'mon, if it helps, it helps. And this.... this was a spread. Potatoes with gravy, spinach (out of a neighbor's garden) creamed corn, beets, a veggie platter, homemade bread, chicken, honey from the family's bee hives and ice cream for dessert.

Bread Recipe

5-6 cups of whole wheat (yeah, she had her own mill in the kitchen so it was fresh, fresh wheat)

4 cups of water (or just over that amount)

2/3 cup sugar

gluten

yeast

Put everything in mixer and add white flour slowly.

She then took us out to the Stoneville School. The school had only recently closed after being around for almost,

if not over, a hundred years. Community members had decided to come together and make it a museum with each of the classrooms representing a different time period in the school. Some of the locals had old desks. One teacher's daughter had her desk from the school. It's an amazing effort and hopefully will be worth the time.